He picked up the tablet device and gave it a tap. The front page of the local newspaper service displayed with a picture of a badly damaged police vehicle being lifted up on to the road. Must have gone over the cliff. The accident took the life of two police officers. There was something familiar but he couldn’t place what.
“Mr Fitzpatrick?” He looked up at a hand stretched towards him. Aaron placed the tablet back on the table.
“Steve Horn. Nice to meet you.”
Aaron stood up and shook his hand. “Aaron Fitzpatrick. Good to meet you as well.”
His host looked down on the tablet device. “Sad event. Popular officers, they were. But there are some dangerous roads up around those hills.”
“Where they in pursuit of anyone?”
“Don’t believe so. Rumour had it that there was a third party in the car but they’ve not been able to locate the missing person. But as you can appreciate, it’s a small town so there’ll be a cloud of mourning sitting over us for some time.” Horn indicated the direction they were going. “Come into the office. Julia will bring your drink.”
Aaron realised the missing person was Lucas. He’d been waiting on further details on his whereabouts.
The office had the same two-seater couch as the reception area but also included two matching recliners. A coffee table separated the seats. There was a large historic photo on the wall. Aaron stared at it.
“Everybody stares at that photo when they come into the office. It’s a side loader bus, 1940s vintage. Six doors opening to rows of seats.”
“It’s a great picture. Good reminder of where we’ve come from.”
“It is.”
They took their seats.
“Now, you mentioned you wanted to view some recordings from one of our buses.” He presented a UBS device to Aaron. “I’ve been able to locate the recording for the date and service you required. It’s all on this USB. It’s yours to keep, but I’ll need you to acknowledge some company confidentiality clauses.”
“Happy to do that.”
<°)))><
Aaron was keen to view the recording Horn gave him. But he was in no rush to bring the chest pains back, so he thought a quick tour of this lovely country town was in order.
He turned into a car park lookout that gave majestic views of a large dam. The touristy sign said the dam was a water source for greater metropolitan Melbourne. Good place as any to watch a video. He only wished all his investigations were this easy—sitting back and watching a video with such a magnificent backdrop. The backdrop would be good for pondering.
He plugged the USB into his tablet and started viewing the recording. The inside of the bus appeared. He saw the girl taking her seat, and not long after a man wearing a brown plaid jacket, scarf, and baseball cap sat down next to her. A man dressed for the seventies. Although the initial reaction of the girl was a cold one she seemed to warm to the man. Aaron had an inkling this was the man he was looking for.
There was also a man sitting behind them. The seventies man turned and said something to him. The bus must have been stopping, because the two men stood up. Aaron watched as his man allowed the other man to go before him. They got off the bus together.
Now where did they go? And were they together?
Aaron noticed another man on the bus. He had a long beard and reminded him of a surveillance officer he once worked with. Could well be that person, as they had the girl under surveillance. But Aaron was only interested in the seventies man.
54 – Hi from the seventies man
WITH HIS BUSINESS IN THE COUNTRY FINISHED, Aaron’s brief leisure trip came to an end and he again joined the hectic world on the Eastern Freeway snaking towards the city. He needed to return to the township in a few hours as he had a meeting planned with some law enforcement officers. In the meantime, he wanted to take the seventies man back in time.
The WAPS - South East Metro office was on the eastern outskirts of the city, halfway back to the city, halfway back to Healesville. As state crime rates continued upwards, surveillance systems were enhanced to assist with the prevention and the prosecuting of crimes. Wide Area Persistent Surveillance—WAPS—utilised drones to cover larger areas than the standard drones used by many organisations. The WAPS utilised hundreds of miniature cameras to collect ‘pattern-of-life’ data. It allowed the tracking of people and vehicles through scrolling data back in time and then moving it forward to trace the path.
Aaron’s knowledge of WAPS came about by a brief secondment to the department responsible for police surveillance activities. There were two systems in place: one covering the North West Metro, the other South East Metro. It was the South East Metro he was interested in.
He now sat at a workstation with an analyst who was bringing to life events surrounding the bus service Aaron was interested in. He watched as the recording zoomed down from the sky towards the city. Railway lines and roads took shape. Southern Cross Station was now clearly in view. He watched as the girl’s bus pulled out of the loading bay. They followed its route. Aaron hoped that the stop where the men got off was still in WAPS range.
He had no need to worry. The bus stopped not long after and the occupant in question got off. It was a hospital. Seventies man moved towards the crowds of people coming to visit their friends and relatives.
“Could you zoom in further?”
The analyst did his best. They could make out the colours of the man’s cap. As the WAPS zoomed in further, they were able to make out the writing on the man’s cap just before he took it off. He seemed to accentuate the letters by positioning his cap in perfect scope for the camera.
It was the word ‘hi’.
Aaron glanced at the analyst, who looked as stunned as Aaron felt.
Seventies man was now just another head in the crowd and it wasn’t long before they lost him.
“Did that man know that we’d be watching him?” Aaron was puzzled.
“Maybe, but you don’t need to be too smart to realise you’re being watched by eyes in the sky.’
“True.” Aaron thought about the other man. Were they connected? “Could you go back to when they got off the bus and follow the path of the other man?”
“Sure.”
They watched as the other man went in the opposite direction. There was no sign or acknowledgement of each other. The other man climbed into a black Mazda.
“Could we follow that car?”
“Let’s see.” The analyst zoomed out and traced the route of the car. He scrolled backwards first to see where it came from. They soon realised it was following the bus. They tracked it until they reached the boundary of the Southern Metro WAPS.
“Well, I think it’s a safe bet that the car followed the bus until the person they were following got off. Easy to confirm. I’ll get info from traffic surveillance systems.”
With the seventies man blending in with the herd, Aaron had lost his connection to the device but he was still curious as to why the girl was being followed, and who was following her. The professor believed someone had killed his daughter and was out to kill his granddaughter. There may be an element of truth to this as the granddaughter was indicating the same thing. He needed to speak to someone about this. He would finalise his report and talk to his boss.
55 – Paintings and notes
AVA LOOKED AT HER HUSBAND as she walked towards him with the coffee. He was oblivious. He didn’t fully comprehend the things she did behind the scenes to hold their empire together. Neither would want to lose the lifestyle they’d worked so hard to obtain.
“Ava, my dear. What’s going on with that strange man who called you?”
She handed the coffee to Anthony. “Initially, he was a threat, but that is now under control although I may have to maintain a platonic relationship with him. We still want to locate the girl.”
“Why can’t we leave her be?”
She sat down on the couch next to him and placed her hand on his lap. “Look around, the paintings, the artefacts, all the envy of many. We live a comfortable life, my dear, and we’ve worked hard for it. Do you want to lose it?”
“But how can we? The girl knows nothing.”
Ava stood up and walked over to a painting. Picasso’s Mother and Child. She couldn’t remember how much they paid for it but knew they’d enhanced their security system to protect it. She looked at the woman leaning over her child as if carrying a heavy emotional burden, lovingly kissing the babe.
